Traffic lights instead of 1, 2, 3, ...

[Kinsu]

but I prefer the one where TB is located at one place for every kart... sounds less like a trick.

I meant only 1 TB, but no kart-relative render : every kart see TB just above the checker line (and if they can't see it, display it a small frame...).

[Kinsu]

I wouldlike to add 3 special/light effects to TB :

1. A kind of glow around the object, for instance :

Ho-oh glow

Planet glow

2. A kind of motion trail that will be visible just behind the wings :

Motion trail

bird_motion.jpg (15.6 KiB) Viewed 17072 times

3. A light effect from the traffic light, that could be seen from far, but without overriding all the colors of the scene.


If anyone knows how to make effects like these ones in Irrlicht, knows tutorials, or can provide any other help, don't hesitate !


(source ho-oh, source planet, source motion trail)

[Funto]

Glowing could be done in a postprocessing step by blurring the input image and combining it with the original rendering.
The difficulty is in specifying which parts of the image we want to make glowing. That could probably be done with the stencil buffer.
I'm not sure what would be the best way to do this with Irrlicht but I think that's possible.

The "motion trail" would be harder to integrate I think. That could be done by rendering the TB in a separate render target, but I don't know how we could keep z-testing correct...

I don't see the difference between the "light effect" you mention and glowing...

BTW, fraang, any news from the texturing?

[Kinsu]

I would prefer to try achieving these effects without post processing first... I can't explain why, but I'm a bit reluctant to using post processing. Maybe it feels like a kind of "add some stuff OVER the real scene, and not INSIDE..." (maybe you can change my mind about it ?)

I don't see the difference between the "light effect" you mention and glowing..

One (blue) glow effect from TB, and another (red, yellow, green) light effect from the trafficlight/progressbar.

[Funto]

That's basically the same effect, but with different colors, right?

About the glowing effect, it could also be achieved by drawing many slightly bigger thunderbirds one over another with a semi-transparent material. This would be simpler to implement and require more draw calls, but if we animate it only once (no reason to do something else), I doubt performance would be so much impacted.

As for post-processing, I would say that adding something "inside" as you say is what we always want to avoid, as this means drawing something that's not visible

[sst]

Hi, ...

I see some improvement(s), for the SuperTuxKart project.

Did it will be "vertical, or horizontal or a single" light = the start light(s) ?

[Auria]

Kinsu, can't you just add planes with the "blur" on them, in blender? It's a cheap way to do the effect but I think it can be quite effective.

regarding the glow, if we always see thunderbird from the same angle, it can just be a billboard behind it


sst: I'm sorry, I don't understand. Tu peux écrire en français si tu n'arrive pas à exprimer ta pensée en Anglais

[sst]

Hi, ...

Auria, sst: I'm sorry, I don't understand. Tu peux écrire en français si tu n'arrive pas à exprimer ta pensée en Anglais

@Auria

Respond = (Please excuse me) I have write it fast, without double verification.

Did the final traffic lights can be = The ThunderBird feathers, change color from red to orange to green.

[Kinsu]

One (blue) glow effect from TB, and another (red, yellow, green) light effect from the trafficlight/progressbar.

That's basically the same effect, but with different colors, right?

No : the blue glow is just around TB, and does not affect other objects in the environment ("halo"), and the light from the trafficlight is a "real" one so it affects karts & the track's objects. And what is likely to be difficult to achieve is making this light powerful so it can be seen from a far distance, but without overriding other colors...

About the glowing effect, it could also be achieved by drawing many slightly bigger thunderbirds one over another with a semi-transparent material.

Yes, this is one solution I could try. I have to make tests to find a cool material.

---

Did it will be "vertical, or horizontal or a single" light = the start light(s) ?

A single light like funto did, with the progress bar shown on it.

Did the final traffic lights can be = The ThunderBird feathers, change color from red to orange to green.

I prefer keeping TB in blue, as it's part of its identity.

---

Kinsu, can't you just add planes with the "blur" on them, in blender?

Are you talking about the motion trail ? This could be a way But this would require additional animation work, as the trail should be longer when the motion is fast, and shorter when it's slower...

regarding the glow, if we always see thunderbird from the same angle, it can just be a billboard behind it

Yes, I can try with a kind of sprite... but how could we determine the current TB shape to draw the glow exactly around it ? And if we want to use TB for rescue (and eventually the "wrong way" warning), the model will be seen from a lot of different angles, so it will maybe be simpler to try with a bigger transluscent TB model around the real one...

Thank you all for helping !

[Kinsu]

I've did not find a lot of resources about Irrlicht glow effects, but there is some interesting stuff here and here.

So apparently it's possible to have cool effects using the VolumeLightSceneNode. Still, I don't know if it will be possible to "adapt" the shape of the lightSceneNode to TB's one...

volumelight_opengl.jpg (24.52 KiB) Viewed 16989 times

Does anyone know Turkish to briefly translate the page of the second link ?


For the motion trail, I also found something interesting :

motiontrail.jpg (16.01 KiB) Viewed 16989 times

Maybe combining it with a kind of blur it could give something really cool (it's already cool )

[fraang]

An update on the Thunderbird texture:


The transparency is messed up by Blender.



It will get some refinements.

[Auria]

I like this texture, fraang, nice work

[charlie]

It does look good but it's not so similar to the Thunderbird icon.



Source: http://www.iconarchive.com/show/softdim ... -icon.html

The Thunderbird mascot is a deeper blue with dark blue underside / wing tips, and less feather definition.

[fraang]

What do you think of this:




I don't want to lose all the details in the texture for the in game character. Aren't the icons the more cartoonish part?

[Auria]

I like the deeper blue

[charlie]

I adjusted the blue and did a bit of smudging as a smoother look (less feathers) may help. It's a rubbish/rush job, because I've no idea how to apply the texture and see it all (I don't have the pipeline set up, nor the tools to do the texture properly).

To get the blue, go to 'Colors' (in GIMP), select Blue and adjust the hue by -17. It still isn't quite right.

If I was being hyper certical of the textures, I'd say the wing tip feathers are too pointy and should be thicker until the end when they curl and sharpen up.

Blue / smoothed example

tbtexture.png (70.14 KiB) Viewed 16914 times

[Funto]

I agree with charlie on all those points.

Actually I liked the "dummy" texture from Kinsu (although il was not finished, etc), and it was more similar to the original Thunderbird...
And I think TB would look better with a lightmap applied to it, even if it's not dynamic ^^

I'm eager to see what the texture would look like after applying the tweaks charlie suggested ^^

[fraang]

I agree with charlie on all those points.

Actually I liked the "dummy" texture from Kinsu (although il was not finished, etc), and it was more similar to the original Thunderbird...
And I think TB would look better with a lightmap applied to it, even if it's not dynamic ^^

I'm eager to see what the texture would look like after applying the tweaks charlie suggested ^^

What do mean by lightmap? Bump/normal mapping? :P

EDIT:
Next try:

[Kinsu]

Thank you for your work, fraang, and charlie & Funto for your feedback about it ! It's a good & promising WIP

Here is my feedback for the current version :

Wings
Note that the original TB wings do have some lighter little feathers at their "base" (vs. their "end"), maybe it could be cool to add some to yours. Same remark as precedently for the end : look like they have been lacerated. Birds' wings have a precise organisation I think it is required to respect to have a convincing final object :

bird-wing-feathers.jpg (32.55 KiB) Viewed 16849 times

(image source)

Tail
The tail should be made of big feathers instead of small ones. Eventually with a little bit of transparency as for the wings

Eyes
A little too red no ? On the original TB, the red was just the shadow part (and not so red !). Here it seems like TB's a little drunk
Note that for the final model, this part of the UV coords should be reviewed, so that the eyes are fully visible from face & side view (for now they are "cut" because of the bad geometry). But this should not affect your work, I think I'll be able to change this without modifying the texture.

Legs & beck
They are cool

General colors
They are also cool, the general mood of the bird respects the original TB. I would add a more visible gradient to change a little the lightness on the belly & the legs base, but this is a polishing detail.

Thank you again for this great work

For my part, I've worked on TB's animations. It's quite a piece of work to make a bird fly convincingly, but I think the final result is worth this work I'll post some videos soon to show how it flies.

[Kinsu]

Ah, and note that for the animation I had to modify a little the model : the wings are less "attached" to the body, and I added some vertices to them. I'll post it soon so you can adapt your texture. This should be very fast to do, as there are only a few faces concerned.

[Funto]

Nice Kinsu for the animations, I'm eager to see those
As you could see, I made a very quick try at animating the wings, which was not realistic at all, and that made me realize the amount of necessary work here ^^

[quote=fraang]What do mean by lightmap? Bump/normal mapping? :P[/quote]
No I mean light maps, i.e. a grayscale image that is used to darken the occluded parts of the mesh.
Though a bump map could be useful as well

[Kinsu]

I found a tutorial to generate lightmaps for blender 2.5 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FmaDwlNBTU

[Kinsu]

Here are the animations I made for Thunderbird (and at the same time the new version of the model & texture coords for fraang).
- Normal flight : just flying (forget the traffic light which should not be here),
- Normal flight carrying : flying with the traffic light
- Static flight carrying : stationnary flight with the traffic light, as the race start will require.

The traffic light texture is, as well as TB's one, not definitive (I made a prettier one but I lost it )

[Funto]

\o/ Nice work!

[Auria]

Very nice animation Kinsu, well done